


contrecoup

by facingthenorthwind (spacegandalf), poppunkpadfoot (StormVandal)



Series: brinkverse [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: HPFT, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-13 20:06:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18038057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacegandalf/pseuds/facingthenorthwind, https://archiveofourown.org/users/StormVandal/pseuds/poppunkpadfoot
Summary: If there was one thing that Muggle hospitals and Wizarding hospitals had in common, Lily noted, it was how slowly time passed in the emergency room.Written for HPFT's Great Collab, theme: back from the brink, challenge: internalized oppression





	contrecoup

If there was one thing that Muggle hospitals and Wizarding hospitals had in common, Lily noted, it was how slowly time passed in the emergency room.

She felt as though she had been sitting there for hours, although the logical part of her brain was quite sure it had only been about fifteen minutes. Then again, the logical part of her brain wasn’t quite at maximum functioning capacity right at that very moment, as it was overwhelmed by the rest of her brain playing and re-playing the moment less than half an hour earlier when, mid-battle, Severus had hit Sirius with a well-placed Sectumsempra. She felt very sluggish, like every movement was costing her twice as much energy and concentration as usual, and her eyes kept going out of focus as she read and re-read the poster on the opposite wall which explained the symptoms of life-threatening dragon pox.

With her watch smashed, she had no way of knowing what was going on with the others - whether anyone else had been injured or whether (her stomach lurched uncomfortably at the thought) they were all still alive. She didn’t even know whether James or Peter knew what had happened, or if the battle was still going on.

All of her felt gritty and grimy but the concept of showering was just… insurmountable. All she wanted was to hear that Sirius was alright, and some entirely irrational part of her brain was convinced that if she took her attention off hoping Sirius would pull through, even for a second, he would die. Some part of her knew that was bullshit, but it was drowned out by a much larger part that made the reasonable-sounding argument that it really wasn’t a risk she could afford to take. 

She was next aware of jerking awake to the sound of James saying, “Lils, wake up.” There were no windows in the waiting room, so the light still looked exactly the same and she had no idea how much time had passed. James was leaning over her, looking distressed and exhausted but ultimately unharmed. For a moment, she was so overcome with relief that she could hardly breathe; her eyes filled with tears, and she wanted to say something, to greet him, but found that she couldn’t make a sound.

“Have you heard anything?” Remus said from behind James. Lily shook her head, still unable to speak.

“I don’t even know what time it is,” she admitted at last, looking away from Remus. She was a failure — the least she could have done for him would be to know the latest information on his possibly-dead boyfriend. Well, presumably if he were actually dead they would have told her, right? You’d wake a person up for that?

“It’s 11:52,” Peter piped up helpfully from behind James.

“Thanks Pete,” she said, though it was absolutely useless information. It didn’t actually matter what time it was because Sirius was still possibly dying and she still felt like all her limbs were made of lead, despite the nap she’d accidentally slipped into. “What happened after we left?”

“Once we incapacitated enough of them, they just ran away,” James said, sneering a little like she remembered him doing back at school. “Moody got visual confirmation that Macnair’s one of them though. Won’t do anything, but now he gets to write that down, I guess? It was all useless.”

“It wasn’t useless,” Remus said, but he was facing away and sounded distracted. “That’ll help Moody build a case and we stopped them from hurting any Muggles tonight, if they were busy fighting us.”

“Where are all the Healers?” James asked instead of replying, looking around in frustration. “Somebody has to have an update, right?”

“I’m sure they’ll tell us if they have any news,” said Remus, quieter this time.

James huffed and ran a hand through his hair. “Suppose,” he grumbled. He sat down next to Lily and jiggled his leg, looking around as if that would get them news faster. After barely thirty seconds, he said, “Does anyone want some tea?”

Everyone said yes with various levels of enthusiasm and distraction, and James left to find somewhere they could procure hot drinks. Peter offered to help him, but he shook his head, looking like he needed a minute alone — or like he was going to go take the opportunity to throw up before he got the tea, possibly. Remus took his place in the seat next to Lily. He was stiller than James but Lily didn’t mistake that for lack of concern — if Lily had to guess, she would say it would be that Remus was used to bad things happening. Certainly he was used to waiting in the aftermath.

“Do you want to go home for a shower?” Remus asked her eventually. “You’ve still got blood all over you.”

She felt a tiny jolt of horror — she’d known, on some level, that she was still covered in Sirius’s blood, but she hadn’t been thinking. Remus, Peter and James shouldn’t have had to see this on top of everything else they’d seen tonight. If only she’d listened when the Healer had offered to clean her up...

But the thought of getting up from her chair and going all the way home was almost unbearable. She didn’t think she’d make it more than a few steps.

“I don’t think I have the energy,” Lily admitted shamefully, not meeting Remus’s eyes. “I just — I just keep seeing his face, and all the blood, and—”

“It’s okay,” he interrupted, sounding slightly strained. “Here, just… let me…”

Gently, he took one of her hands in his, and with a few mumbled words and a wave of his wand, her hand was clean. Well, mostly clean - there were a few flecks left, here and there - but she’d heard Remus’s voice trembling despite how quietly he’d spoken, so she could hardly blame him for not getting everything. He did the same with the other hand, and then he released her and the two of them fell back into silence.

On Remus’s other side, Peter flicked through a magazine, clearly not reading anything.

“I’m so sorry,” Lily said quietly after a minute, staring at her lap. “This is all my fault.”

“What?” Remus said, looking up at her sharply. “What are you talking about?”

“This, Sirius, and — it wouldn’t have happened if James hadn’t decided to fancy me, and get involved with the war, and Severus — it was Severus that did it, and I should’ve been able to stop him or—” Lily curled in on herself as she spoke, wishing she could just sink into the floor. How dare she take up space! How dare she put the people she loved in danger! If it weren’t for her blood, they wouldn’t be here. If it weren’t for her blood, Sirius wouldn’t have lost so much of his.

“Lily,” Remus said firmly, sounding almost angry. “Don’t. James isn’t here because he fancies you, and Sirius _certainly_ isn’t here because James fancies you. Both of them are here because Voldemort’s a bloody maniac and fighting him is the right thing to do. And Snape’s actions aren’t your responsibility.”

“But I knew he’d created that spell, I should’ve…”

“Should’ve done what? He’s already used it on Moody, we already knew about it.”

“I mean when he created it, we were still friends then.”

“What were you going to do, wipe his memory age fifteen?”

It was at this point that James arrived, paper cups of tea in his hands, looking extremely confused.

“Wipe whose memory?”

“Snape’s,” Remus said at the same time Peter piped up, “Snivellus,” and Lily said, “Severus’s.”

James made a face as if deciding it wasn’t worth pursuing and instead handed out the tea. “I take it we haven’t heard anything?”

“No,” Remus sighed. James let out a huff of frustration and practically collapsed into the chair on Lily’s other side, putting an arm around her and drawing her in until her head rested against his shoulder. They all smelled pretty terrible, sweaty from equal parts exertion and terror, but it was the closest to normal Lily had felt all night.

The four of them sat there quietly for a while, as all the waiting room’s background noises washed over them.

“I wish I’d known what to do,” Lily said into the silence. “If — if I hadn’t… I should’ve known what to do.”

She didn’t say _if I weren’t Muggleborn I’d have known what to do_ , but she could feel the words weighing on her tongue. For what felt like the millionth time that night, she felt her eyes well up with tears. She turned her head a little to try to hide her face against James’s shoulder.

James, in response, pulled her a little closer. “We’ll make Moody give us proper training. None of us knew, and we can’t get in another situation where we have to wait for Moody or Alice to turn up while one of us bleeds to death.”

“You saved his life, Lily,” Remus added softly. “You… I — I just froze, and you knew what to do. He… he would have died.”

“He was dying! He might still be dying!” she said, feeling a little hysterical compared to everyone else, who seemed to be much better at speaking in soft, reasonable tones, saying soft, reasonable things. “We don’t know anything.”

“I’ll — I’m his brother, surely if—” James said, his frustrated words belying the way he softly nudged Lily so she sat up, allowing him to stand. “I’ll be back.”

Lily watched him leave and disappear around a corner to where they had taken Sirius. She wasn’t sure if there were laws about medical privacy in the wizarding world, or whether James could spin that he really was Sirius’s brother, given Sirius was white and James was Indian. 

Barely a minute later, Lily heard words like “adopted” and “no, our parents are dead”; more silence, and then finally, _finally_ James re-emerged, wiping his eyes with the heels of his hands. All three of them stood, and Lily could feel her heart in her throat threatening to choke her, but he said, “He’s — he’s okay, they’re saying he’s going to be okay.” 

Peter let out a breath, Remus’s knees buckled and Lily just stood and swayed for a moment, not quite believing it. Before she even had a chance to process the fact that _Sirius was going to be okay_ , though, James strode across the room and pulled her tightly into his arms.

“Thank you,” he choked quietly into her hair, “for being so bloody brilliant. Moony was right, Lily, you saved his life. The Healer said so herself.”

“Can I see him?” Remus asked somewhere to Lily’s right. He sounded a little breathless.

“I think maybe?” James replied, lifting his head enough that he was no longer talking directly into Lily’s temple. “I only got a quick glimpse of him, but you should go around the corner and check, ask Healer Li, she’s got a name badge.”

She heard, rather than saw, Remus walk away; her face was buried in James’s chest, and she absolutely did not have the strength to lift her head. Peter, by the sounds of it, had followed Remus — although she hoped he would at least have the tact to wait outside the room for a few minutes.

She tried to will herself to pull away, to stand up straight — she knew James would want to see Sirius as well. But, to her vague surprise, James made no move to pull away. If anything, he held her closer.

“You don’t seriously believe that you didn’t do enough, do you?” he asked quietly after a moment. “You were the only one that could do anything. If you hadn’t been there, he would be dead.”

“Remus—”

“Moony helped, and made sure you _could_ do it by protecting you both, but he wasn’t the one covered in blood. You _saved his life_ , Lily.”

She wanted to concede, really, she did. The last thing James should’ve had to worry about at that moment was her getting all self-pitying on him. But when her mind wandered she could still feel Sirius’s blood gushing out over her useless fingers, see the sickly-white pallor of his skin, and the way he had tried so hard to smile at her— 

She stifled a sob.

“Come on, sit down,” James said, kissing the top of her head and guiding her back to the row of seats that lined the wall. They sat down side by side, but instead of wrapping his arms around her again, he cupped her face in his hands and looked searchingly into her eyes. “What is going on with you?”

Lily didn’t even want to meet his eyes, but he wasn’t giving her much choice. She felt so ashamed; that she hadn’t known what to do, that she was doing this now, that she couldn’t hold it together for him. But she couldn’t stand how worried he looked — how worried she was making him look.

“Maybe,” she whispered, directing her gaze anywhere but at his eyes, “if I’d grown up with magic like you, I… I could have helped him properly. I didn’t know what to do, James, I just. I wasn’t going to leave him alone to… I wasn’t going to leave him by himself.”

For a long moment, James just stared at her. 

“Lily,” he said eventually in disbelief. “There is nothing I know, by virtue of having some bullshit entry in the Sacred Twenty-Eight, that you do not. I mean, I’d probably be a little better at dinner party etiquette, but nothing _important_. You are academically infinitely better than every pureblood I can think of, and if anything you know _more_ than purebloods, because you know Muggle stuff too. You think I knew that stuff about putting pressure on the wound? That was all you and Moony. And, I mean, you think I would’ve known some spell you didn’t? I don’t. It’s not your fault we haven’t been given proper bloody first aid lessons.”

 _Merlin_ , Lily loved this man. She wanted to kiss him, but instead she just gave him the most genuine smile she could manage. It was watery, but if the smile he gave her in return was any indicator, she got her message across loud and clear.

“Let’s go see Sirius,” she suggested.

“Yeah,” James said, still smiling at her. He kissed her on the forehead before they both got up, and wrapped a supportive arm around her waist, although she was pleased to find she felt much steadier on her feet now. “But… let’s get you home soon, yeah?” he continued as they started down the hall. “Just because you’re brilliant doesn’t mean you don’t need rest.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, and leaned against him slightly. “That sounds good.”


End file.
